What Are The Gobshites Saying The Days?

Welcome back to our weekly survey of the state of Our National Dialogue which, as we know, is what Lieber and Stoller would have come up with had they composed "Strangle The Yak."

(Don't talk back.)

We just have to begin our tour in the studios of This Week With The Clinton Guy Shocked By Blowjobs because I think any one of these shows that features both Al Franken and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wins the House Cup easily, even beating out the appearance by will.i.am. on Disco Dave's Disco Dance Party, which we will get to in a while. While chewing over the Donald Sterling situation, Kareem came up with the Quote Of The Week.

ABDUL-JABBAR: Well, this is a problem. I did a little bit of research, more whites believe in ghosts than believe in racism. That's why we don't have -- that [sic] why we have shows like Ghostbusters and don't have shows like Racistbuster. You know, it's something that's still part of our culture and people hold on to some of these ideas and practices just out of habit and saying that well that's the way it always was. But things have to change.

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I totally would watch Racistbusters. If the first episode was a two-parter at the Bundy Ranch, the ratings would be through the roof.

The interview with Franken was completely bizarre. It seemed as though ABC expected him to come out as Stuart Smalley.

ZELENY: We caught up with Franken in rural Minnesota. He's starting to run for reelection after spending his first term honing his serious side. (on camera): So you're not afraid to use humor, but it seems like you've been selective in using it.

FRANKEN: When I go to the floor and I'm with a colleague, will I crack wise, as they say?

Sure, you know.

And in a hearing?

Sure.

That's who I am.

ZELENY: A top Republican in Minnesota told me that you have done a remarkable job making yourself into a serious person.

FRANKEN: I was always a serious person. People who are funny are very often very serious people, and vice versa.

ZELENY (voice-over): He became famous bringing Stuart Smalley and other "Saturday Night Live" characters into America's living rooms.

That gagging noise you heard was Mark Twain choking on a cigar.

At least, it was original casting, which can almost never be said of the Sunday Showz. Later, though, it was back to the same old puppet theater.

(JONATHAN) KARL: Yes, there's no question. Here's the thing. The White House -- what this seems to suggest is that the White House wanted Susan Rice to talk so much about the protests triggering that attack -- that attack in Benghazi, to deflect criticism from White House policies. But now what has happened is the bigger issue is why was that e-mail not turned over to Congress earlier? That failure to turn over has got Republicans on Capitol Hill crying cover-up and John Boehner, speaker of the House, doing what he has long resisted doing, which is creating a special committee to have yet another investigation into Benghazi.

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Yes, Boehner was shoved behind the grill, forced into an apron, and made to serve the country nothingburgers for an entire summer. If the White House had stapled the e-mail -- which says nothing new about a scandal that still centers on what was said on television shows like this one -- to Ben Rhodes's forehead and shipped him to Capitol Hill, the Republicans would still be "crying cover up." Karl knows this. Watch him. He's going to work the drive-thru window for serving up the nothingburgers. If you don't believe me, watch The Clinton Guy step on a rake.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And that is just getting set up right now -- and, Martha, eyebrows also raised after this testimony from retired general, Robert Lovell, who was part of the Africa Command.

I want to play you a bit of it.

(AUDIO GAP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: I'm afraid we don't have it right there, Martha. But the point was, he said -- he conceded that they perhaps should have tried to do something with the military there, even though he also conceded there was not much that he could do.

RADDATZ: And that's exactly right, George. Brigadier General Lovell said despite his wish that more could have been done, given how rapidly things were happening, the military would not have been able to get there to Benghazi in time, which is what official reports have determined, as well.

And that's all that should matter. Alas...

STEPHANOPOULOS: And, Martha, this, of course, raises again the critical issue of security. And you went behind the scenes to find out what more is being done to protect our diplomats.

Old friend Martha Raddatz then did a solid report about how embassy security was beefed up after the Benghazi attacks. Not that anyone who will be feasting on the nothingburgers will care. "The critical issue," George and Martha (and why didn't I ever notice that before?), will be that Susan Rice something-something-contempt-something-mumble-something. Until at least the second week of November. Cokie Roberts has that part sussed.

ROBERTS: -- reporting on Benghazi. It's like alternative universes. You know, you have -- you have one group of people saying, look there was nothing -- there was -- we weren't doing anything here and another group of people saying it was all evil. The truth is the White House should have released this email. That was a big either mistake or venality. And it's also true that everybody does talking points before Sunday programs and the talking points are about politics and limiting political damage.

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Dear Jesus, spare us from centrists like this. One group of people has been utterly insane on the topic since the night the attacks happened. The other group of people may or may not have bungled what they said on The Sunday Showz. Experts divided on state of world. And, as though things hadn't become ugly enough, we were treated to currently career-free politician Rick Santorum, the fellow who believes the Iranians will nuke us in order to bring on the return of the 12th Imam, and have I mentioned recently what a colossal dick Rick Santorum is?

RICK SANTORUM, FORMER SENATOR: I can tell you that there's a firestorm out there across America among a lot of -- a lot of Republicans who believe that we have not been diligent in taking this issue on and this email is going to confirm all of that.

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"A firestorm across America"? Three rubes in Council Bluffs with their hair on fire. Maybe. Has anyone broken it to this guy yet that he wasn't elected in 2012 and that, in fact, the last time he was a finalist in an election, he lost (as an incumbent) by a couple of touchdowns?

(ABC ideological quota hire Laura Ingraham chipped in what the network's pays her for. At one point, she compared the barbaric botched execution in Oklahoma to abortion. Nice hire, ABC.)

Things were a little better over on CBS, where onetime Vercingetorix embed Bob Schieffer talked Sterling, too, and he allowed Senator Huckleberry J. Butchmeup to handle the spatula at the grill.

GRAHAM: "I would say to anybody who believes that this is just about politics, 'Go tell that to the family members. Go explain to the family members how it's okay for the White House to withhold information from the Congress and the American people...Anybody who plays politics with Benghazi is going to get burned. So if we're playing politics with Benghazi, then we'll get burned. If our Democratic friends are shielding the administration and trying to protect them and the administration tried to protect themselves, their re-election because they couldn't stand the truth about Benghazi, then they'll get burned."

Says a guy who's been flogging his cause with four corpses for going on two years. If you think Huckleberry is in this for "the families," you are allowed to wonder why he wasn't in it for "the families" of the 60 people killed at various attacks on our embassies during the previous administration. If you think he's in it to flex for the cameras -- and his policy recommendations on Russia make him look, as once was said of Arnold Schwarzeneggar, like a condom full of walnuts -- you are as smart a person as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

And we conclude with the Dancin' Master, the water at six feet high and rising, and bailing as fast as he can. As we said, will.i.am was on the show, much to the dismay of the various flying monkeys.

WILL.I.AM.: As a world traveler, I have the same viewpoint. When you go to Germany and Australia and Brazil, especially Brazil, and in India, you see these developing countries, and they're developing in one particular area, in education and technology. And then when you come to America, you see this, like, we grow, but the citizens aren't growing. Like, our colleges are still the best colleges, but the people in the neighborhood that I come from aren't trying to go to MIT. They're not thinking of Stanford. They're not thinking Harvard. People from India come to attend these colleges. And then they get educated and they go to their country and create jobs in their developing country. So when you travel the world you get to see, like, the country you are from and how we are developing or not.

This, on the other hand, is a real member of the real Congress, one Jason Chaffetz of Utah:

CHAFFETZ: I really do like what you're doing in terms of not just having STEM, but making it STEAM. I do believe that arts is one of the keys. Because if you can take those people in science and technology and math, one of the beauties of the United States of America, we're creative. We create things. And having those arts engaged in that, I believe that the best way to do that is at the state level. What we're frustrated with is we don't want the federal bureaucracy. There shouldn't even be a federal Department of Education because I want to drag that down to the states. Let them innovate. Let us and you figure out how to educate our kids.

There never have been near enough basketball immortals and musicians on these shows. Always said that.